This has now become the age where hard drive space is a necessity when playing video games. While it has always been needed for PC’s, console games of this generation are required to have not only the games installed but need lots of space to do so. Both the Xbox One and the PS4 initially come with only a 500gb hard drive which is hardly enough for all the games with massive install sizes and updating them also needs to be factored in. Microsoft knows this and in fact have allowed the use of external hard drives awhile back with the Xbox One and Xbox 360 before that. Seagate has made the official Xbox hard drive but is it the drive you need over any other?
The Seagate Game Drive for Xbox comes in two sizes of 2tb and 4tb, both of which support Xbox One but only the 2tb supports the Xbox 360. It comes in the Xbox green fashion and is small enough to be tucked away on the side or even on top with no extra cords needed except the one to connect to the Xbox itself. The other good thing about the drive is that it’s also ready to go when you get it and doesn’t need to be formatted. In fact it’s recommended that you don’t formate it at all. Believe it or not my favorite thing about this drive is that it is easy to take with you on the go to bring your content to a friends house or trips. I had a much bigger hard drive attached to my Xbox’s that needed a wall outlet and all, needless to say mobility was at a minimal.
The performance is what you’d expect from Seagate drives which is to say very well. With the USB 3.0 and a drive speed of 5,400 rpm it is if not almost as fast as the internal drive. When testing load times were shaved by even a few seconds so don’t expect to be blown away but know the quality of the drive is on point. Unfortunately because of how the Xbox brand works it doesn’t allow for you to use across the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One together so you’ll need to chose one or get a drive for each if that’s your preference.
So here’s the downside to this, by Seagates drives standard it is essential the Expansion Portable external hard drive they already have that is slightly cheaper with the exception of the color scheme and ease of use when you get it. Another one which actually has less to do with the drive and more to do with Xbox is there’s no ability to transfer everything at once from the Xbox One internal drive to this and if you’ve been playing and storing games for awhile (like I have) then this is going to be a pain in the ass to port everything over one by one. With that said it does it at relatively at high speeds with its drive speed.
Bottomline
The Seagate Game Drive for Xbox is an external hard drive plain and simple. What you get with it is knowing you won’t have any compatibility or syncing issues as it’s formatted and good to go out of the xbox. The sleekness of its green xbox shell lends itself well to the console but with so many special edition and color variations we wished they would make an assortment of color options to really have that custom flair when showing off your console to compliment it. A good buy overall and definitely needed with this generation of games.
[Editor-in-Chief] Co-founder of LVLONE I work to bring you our readers a fun outlet to read tech and gaming news, reviews and experiences.
